


all that you can't leave behind

by olandesevolante



Category: Homeland
Genre: Character Study, F/M, I mean kind of love triangles, Jealousy, Love Triangles, Missing Scene, Non-Graphic Smut, Pre-Epilogue, Too Many Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26513260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olandesevolante/pseuds/olandesevolante
Summary: What she has never considered before is, can you fall in love twice at the same time?
Relationships: Carrie Mathison/Yevgeny Gromov
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20





	all that you can't leave behind

**Author's Note:**

> \- this time I can't even say this made sense when I plotted it because it just never had it, it's a lot of Carrie thinking and reflecting and that's it;  
> \- title comes from Walk On by U2;  
> \- I don't own the characters, I don't make money out of this (even if I wish I did).  
> \- (this is basically a masterclass of "I can't deal with my own feelings if I don't live them through fictional characters")

_Love is not the easy thing..._

_The only baggage that you can bring is_

_all that you can't leave behind._

When you love someone, you don't betray him. That's been told to Carrie since she was a child, and she kept this in mind in all the relationship she had. When she was studying at college, there was a nice guy she made friends with, who hinted at wanting something more. There was only one problem, in Carrie's eyes: he was in a relationship. Now, the problem wasn't that he had a girlfriend in itself – after all, the girlfriend was his, not hers – but the fact that Carrie didn't understand why he kept being in a relationship even if he clearly wasn't in love with this girl. That's not what a person in love does, or at least, that's not what she learnt a person in love does.

\-----

_Yevgeny's hands are strong and big around her hips and she is weak for that particular, she loves feeling so small in comparison to him. His mouth travels on her breasts, sucking one of them gently and making her gasp. She buckles her hips against him but he keeps her in place so easily._

\-----

Another thing everyone has been telling her since she was a child is that being in love and in love returned is the best experience you can have in life, and finding the right person is a unique experience, something that happens once and that you have to be smart enough to catch it and not let it fly away. Something that changes your life like nothing else can do.

While Carrie can, somehow, still believe that being loved by the person you love is something close to a miracle, she knows now that heartbreaks define a person much more than a happy love story can ever do. And she could say she has been defined enough for another lifetime, as everything and everyone she loved broke her. Brody broke her. The CIA broke her. America broke her. She's not sure whether Quinn broke her or if it happened the other way round, but she surely broke Jonas. Saul is a whole different story of breaking, Carrie doesn't think she'll be able to forgive herself for what she did to him, no matter what Yevgeny says to help her overcome it. It doesn't matter that he made her see just how much her old boss has counted on her when she wasn't ready for it, all she can think of is Saul, on his bed, ready to die instead of betraying his country.

What she has never considered before is, _can you fall in love twice at the same time?_ Carrie has always thought that she would have been lucky to find one person to fall in love with, aware of how difficult is for her to be really interested in someone, let alone finding two. What she didn't plan, though, was not only to be in love with two entities at the same time, but that these entities would be so different in their nature such as Yevgeny and the US are.

That is why thinking of Saul stings so much in her chest, because he was ready to do what she couldn't do: love his country and show his love so clearly.

\-----

_She takes off what's left of his clothes, takes some seconds to admire the toned body in front of her, knowing very well that the feeling of her eyes on him excites Yevgeny a lot. Lets her hands run on his chest, circles his navel with her fingers eliciting a small moan out of his mouth, then runs them lower following the trail of hairs. Carrie can't take her eyes off his face, enjoying the view of how it changes under her touches, enjoying the knowledge of being the one who does this to the Russian spy._

\-----

Later, in her life, Carrie came to realize that the reality is actually different, and that it's not something you can look at from only one side. She comes to learn that it's not always true that when you're in love you don't betray your partner, but it can happen that you betray when there's an issue you can't solve with him. It can be because one of you is not mature enough to have a serious discussion about the problem, or because the feeling that bound you at first just isn't there anymore, but you refuse to acknowledge it.

The point is: who is the partner she can't talk about her problems with? Yevgeny, all caring and comprehensive? America, that she loved more than anyone else she'd ever loved? She likes to think that she is not betraying her partner, when she starts writing her book. It's Russia that she is betraying, the country that kidnapped her and tortured her and exploited her to the point that she gave up one of biggest secrets of her boss. When she thinks about it like this, the guilt in her chest almost disappears, becomes only a small puncture, something like a needle. (She hides to herself that America too, in its own way, treated her in a very bad way, something that would have made her recoil and run away if it had been a boyfriend doing so. But it was America, and she never was able to forget it for real, never really able to let go of it.)

The thing is, betraying Russia means also betraying Yevgeny. Her partner loves his country and has already been ready to sacrifice everything for it. She doesn't even want to think about what will happen to her if he discovers the message in the book. She doesn't want to know what is the answer to the question, _who do you love more, me or Russia?_

\-----

_Yevgeny likes when she is sitting on his hips like this, because he loves to turn their positions and bring her under him. Carrie knows this as much as she knows she loves being manhandled by him a bit, and that's why she sits on him, moving slowly even if burning with desire. He has his head thrown back on the pillow, eyes closed, the colour of his beard and hair a stark contrast against the white of the pillow. He can resist only some seconds more before grabbing her and change this, so that now he's on her, between her open legs, his mouth attached to her neck. Carrie grabs a fistful of his hair when he enters her._

\-----

Once Carrie remembers going to a Chinese restaurant with her sister, in what feels like having been the life of another person. There, they bought one fortune cookie each. Carrie's one read: “he who isn't jealous, is he really in love?”.

And Carrie is not jealous, she knows she has no right to, not when her supposed rival is, in fact, a country, not when she's the first one who is betraying his partner with another country.

_Except_. Except that she is jealous, she is a lot jealous when he is gone for days and then comes home bruised and even when he doesn't say it she knows the damages could have been much worse, and he could have died. She's jealous because he would be ready to give his life for Russia without thinking twice and probably without giving a thought about her too, and she doesn't care that she is actually doing the same thing, risking to be discovered as a spy and not daring to think at what the consequences would be. And still, even if she is acting exactly in the same way, she can't help feeling this pang of jealousy every time he leaves for a mission. After all, she is in love, and love makes you foolish. That's something else Carrie has known since she was a child.

\-----

_Carrie squeezes her eyes, mouth open and breathing hard. Her hand runs on the sheet to find Yevgeny's arm, strokes it gently and then holds his hand. Like that, without speaking, the only thing she can hear is her own heartbeat and the breaths of his partner. In moments like this, she could quite believe she's his only love and she's not betraying him._

_\-----_

Because, in the end, if you're not jealous, are you really in love?

**Author's Note:**

> (the person that actually found that fortune cookie is me, and that's where all this started.)


End file.
